Ohioans' defensive tactics in 1812 left much to be desired

Sunday

Jul 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2012 at 10:29 AM

This is about a brief incident that played out on the Ohio frontier during the War of 1812. It illustrates how panic reigned even in central Ohio during that war. Much of the panic was caused when an American army under Gen. William Hull marched on the British in Canada and Fort Detroit, and inexplicably surrendered to the enemy.

This is about a brief incident that played out on the Ohio frontier during the War of 1812. It illustrates how panic reigned even in central Ohio during that war.

Much of the panic was caused when an American army under Gen. William Hull marched on the British in Canada and Fort Detroit, and inexplicably surrendered to the enemy.

That left no protection between the Ohio settlers and marauding Indians coming down from Canada. Settlers thought they could be wiped out.

In reaction to that threat, Ohioans built blockhouses throughout the countryside that they thought would offer protection.

One of those blockhouses was built in Union County on Mill Creek, a tributary of the Scioto River along the Sandusky Indian trail. Seventy militiamen were sent there to ward off any attack.

The famed frontiersman Jonathan Alder and his friend John Johnson were assigned to the contingent as scouts. What happened there was recorded in Alder’s memoirs.

The two scouts, who were very familiar with Indian tactics, thought that building blockhouses far from settlements to protect the settlers was complete folly. They knew that the Indians, if they did come, simply would bypass the blockhouses and attack the settlers where they lived.

The militiamen were camped on the grounds surrounding the blockhouse. They had been there for about two weeks, and Alder and Johnson were becoming bored to death. So they hatched a plan to test the mettle of the so-called protectors.

When they were on guard duty one night and the rest of the men were asleep, they fired their rifles into the night sky and feigned an Indian attack. The militiamen about jumped out of their skins and ran madly toward the protection of the blockhouse. Alder wrote that the militiamen “ran like cattle” and likened the scene to a stampede.

The only casualty in the whole affair happened when one of the militiamen ran into a tree in the darkness and bruised his face.

Alder wrote that he followed the stampede into the blockhouse “to see the fun.”

After the panic, the commanding officer, who also had scurried into the blockhouse, saw the folly of stationing the militiamen away from their homesteads. He dismissed all his men.

Alder wrote: “By 10 a.m. we were all on our way home, and most were with their families that night.”

It’s difficult to criticize those isolated militiamen, though, seeing as how panic was ablaze across the Ohio country during that war, which began 200 years ago.